


Self-Reclamation for Dummies

by astrugglingstoic



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: A Prime Example of the Author Having Their GD Cake and Eating It Too, Everyone's Doing the Best They Can, M/M, Post-Civil War Fallout, Returning to Their Regularly Scheduled Sex Lives, Semi-retirement, Steve and Bucky Sitting in a Tree K-I-N-K-I-N-G, Team Cap Are Not Fugitives, Therapy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-14 03:48:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28664199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astrugglingstoic/pseuds/astrugglingstoic
Summary: “Ireek,” Steve huffs, seemingly appalled, though his eyes are darting all over Bucky as he protests, and he’s licking his chops. “I’mdisgusting.”“Good. Now get over here and fuck me like it’s 1944.”
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 16
Kudos: 80





	1. I just finished replacing these countertops, and I’d rather not bust ’em.

Even for a city boy like himself, Bucky will admit there are some perks to owning forty acres of land upstate.

For one, the seclusion is pretty helpful since his fate is still being decided in a protracted game of three-way tug of war between Congress, intelligence communities, and the public. There’re no neighbors nosing into their business or listening through their walls—and he’s installed his own countersurveillance to prevent both. Their home, for the first time in their lives, is not beholden to anyone else—not parents, landlords, billionaire mad scientists, or African kings. They could paint the house in polka dots and use Velcro for carpeting, and no one would be able to do a goddamn thing about it because it’s _theirs_ and theirs alone.

(Sure, they never met a single realtor in person, and neither of the names on the deed match their birth certificates, but a heap of cash up front has a way of smoothing over such technicalities. It turns out Natasha, who acted as their stateside real estate rep while they were in Wakanda, can accomplish plenty with a few free weekends, some elaborate forgeries, and one misappropriated S.H.I.E.L.D. photostatic veil.)

Hands-down, the _best_ thing about their current living arrangement is Steve’s newfound habit of running all over the property half-naked. Now, hear him out, he’s not just some lecher with misguided priorities, and while Steve’s always been a damn fine sight from every angle, it’s more about the _way_ Steve carries himself now: unencumbered. It’s the only word he can think to describe it. 

He might’ve come at it from the opposite direction, but he still knows a thing or two about losing yourself inside a uniform, and Steve hadn’t taken his off since ’43. These days, Steve seems lighter, and when he returns from his morning jogs, breathless and stripped-down and exposed to the world, he just about levitates.

He smiles to himself when he hears Steve groan gratefully from the front porch, already smelling the brewing coffee with that bloodhound nose of his. Steve kicks his dirty tennis shoes onto the mat outside and lets the _whack_ of the screen door announce his return. With spring blurring into summer, Steve likes to air out the house when he leaves in the mornings. The moron still enjoys running alongside the sunrise, so Bucky hauls his ass out of bed early as many days a week as he can stand to head off the matutinal decimation of foodstuffs known as breakfast.

“I’ll be down in ten,” Steve calls, about to climb the stairs for a quick rinse-off.

“C’mere for a minute,” he answers, voice husky with the first words of the day.

Steve pops into the doorway, flushed and glistening, damp and dark around his hairline with a raging case of bedhead that he hadn’t bothered to fix when he got up. Most of their property is untamed woods, and Steve spent the greater part of the fall and winter conquering the terrain, stamping and clearing trails through the undergrowth. The uneven ground is more of a challenge for him than a paved path, but it still takes a hell of a lot of miles to make Steve really sweat.

“Yeah?”

After a few good sunburns, Steve broke out in freckles, across his shoulders and the bridge of his nose, down his forearms. Golden everywhere but the places his shorts cover. He bet he could persuade Steve to sunbathe in the altogether, even out that tan. They’ve got a few acres of proper yard; they could lay down towels, sip lemonade, and make love through an afternoon, greasy with lotion.

Now, _there’s_ an idea. He can practically _taste_ the potential: the sun and the sweetness and Steve.

He’s blindsided by a gut-punch of want and a mental reminder that it’s been so long _—so very_ _long_ —since he’s had Steve. 

Sex has implicitly been off the table since they got back together, but he’s not a monk for Chrissakes—he still _looks._ After all, they’re sharing a house, a bed, and occasionally, a shower, which makes Steve, in all his degrees of clothedness, ineluctable. The desire didn’t go anywhere; that was never the problem. He just couldn’t seem to get his head and his body in sync, no matter how badly he wanted to. When one switched on, the other tended to switch off.

Something inside of him has been misaligned, dislocated for decades. Don’t ask him why of all times and all things, _this_ morning and _this_ ruddy, perspiring Steve snap it back into place, but they do. It’s all working for him—from the full-body flush to the cling of Steve’s workout shorts. It’s really fucking working for him.

Bucky leans heavily on his metal arm propped against the kitchen island, his stomach dropping out like he’s just tipped over the first hill of the Cyclone, and struggles to rally enough spit together to swallow. 

“Buck?”

“I won’t bite. C’mere,” he rasps, low and quiet, and maybe a regular person wouldn’t be able to hear it across the room, but Steve does, back straightening to attention.

Steve’s been on the receiving end of that tone and that heated stare enough times to recognize what Bucky’s after. He freezes, like he’s smelling fresh blood on the air. (Is it still a trap if the prey is the one who sets it? If the predator wants to be caught?) After a flicker of hesitation, Steve asserts, “No,” and then brings in the reinforcements, squaring his shoulders and tightening his jaw. 

“Yes,” he replies patiently because they both know what’s going to happen. He’s not the only one who’s been looking all these months, not by a long shot. 

“No.” 

Vibranium fingertips tap in leisurely succession against the countertop. He sighs and says, “Yeah, pal.” 

_“No.”_

_“Yes.”_

“I _reek,”_ Steve huffs, seemingly appalled, though his eyes are darting all over Bucky as he protests, and he’s licking his chops. “I’m _disgusting.”_

“Good. Now get over here and fuck me like it’s 1944.” 

Steve digs his heels in, the knuckles of his fists blanching at his sides, eyes dark and heavy like swollen rainclouds. He wants it so badly he’s shaking—breathing hard and open-mouthed like the couple of marathons he just ran are finally catching up to him. 

He smiles gently and states, plain and simple, “I’ll beg.” It’s only fair that Steve knows he’s just as desperate. “I’ll get down on my knees if it’ll get you over here.”

A visible shiver runs through Steve from head to toe, breaking him out of his holding pattern. He strides across the kitchen with that sleek power only seen otherwise in the big cats, graceful yet lethal. Steve steps right up to him, grips his waist, and hoists him onto the kitchen island as if he were in any way, shape, or form _petite._

“Fuck,” Bucky gasps, heart just _pounding_ behind his ribcage.

Eyes roving all over him, Steve dives forward, shoving his shirt up and out of the way so he can press his face to Bucky’s stomach, breathing him in, kissing him, content to suffocate himself there. Steve’s arms wrap around him in a tight hug, fingertips digging into his back just the right side of frantic and hungry. “Oh, baby,” Steve whispers, humid and reverential against his skin.

_“Fuck,”_ Bucky repeats, curling forward over Steve, around him, keeping him tucked in close against his core, where it feels like Steve can be protected. “I don’t remember the last time I kissed you.” He admits it to himself as much as to Steve, combing through Steve’s longer hair with his flesh fingers, gathering a handful to hold onto and squeeze at the roots. 

Steve grunts and burrows harder into him, and they stay like that for a while, quivering and panting into each other. Somehow, it’s still the purest comfort, like overworked bodies coming to rest after a long day. Spending his first night in bed with Steve, albeit in a hut on a Wakandan goat farm, felt like coming back to himself, but this feels like coming home.

When Steve finally rights himself, his lips are cherry-red, his eyes are dazed, and his blush has deepened. “I’ll make sure you remember this one.” Steve kisses him long and proper, cradling his neck, thumbs pressed to either pulse point firmly enough that the pressure backs up into his head until it thumps and swims. Every throb behind his eyelids is bliss, blooms of red fading to gray fading to black.

“Can’t recall you ever kissing me with a beard,” he mumbles, eyes closed as he tips forward for another kiss. With tongue this time, he hopes, and maybe a hint of teeth. 

“Haven’t before,” Steve explains, his blazing-hot hands still roaming inside Bucky’s shirt, sweeping across his back and chest and ribcage. “Couldn’t grow much back then, even if I’d wanted to.”

He hums, scratching lightly at the dark-blond bristles on Steve’s jaw. “Now look at you—and this _hair._ Makes you look like a California boy, all swept-back and sun-bleached. A real beach bum.” He beams fondly at Steve.

“Yeah, yeah,” Steve says, voice thick with Brooklyn, “like you’re one to talk with that mane.” He knocks their foreheads together lightly, his skin still damp and scorching as his body sheds the excess heat.

Suddenly inspired, Bucky rolls his cheek against Steve’s, smearing Steve’s sweat onto his own face, the salty scent making his nostrils flare. His hands unclamp themselves from the edge of the countertop and skate across the slick dip of Steve’s lower back, thighs winding around Steve’s waist to draw him closer. He buries his face in the swell of Steve’s pecs, nuzzles and licks and goes a little lightheaded.

“Aw—jeez, Buck,” Steve breathes, a tinge of forties embarrassment in his voice but mostly awe and pleasure.

“Get me outta this, will ya?” Bucky yanks at the back of his t-shirt’s collar to get it started, and Steve helps him finish it, tossing it onto the linoleum. Steve’s putting off enough heat right now to be a goddamn radiator, which only makes everything slipperier and stickier with Bucky’s own complementary enhanced metabolism factored in. Heat prickles down his spine and across his upper lip, and he decides this is glorious, this is _right,_ dragging Steve back in flush against him. 

Impossibly, they’re both winded, breathing hot and wet into each other as they trade deep kisses. With every minute shift, he can feel all of Steve’s beautiful textures: his coarse hair and peaked nipples and tense abs.

Steve pecks his lips, chaste and disarming, before reaching between them to cup Bucky through his boxers. _“Yeah,”_ Steve groans, low and throaty, an affirmation. Gratified because Bucky’s enjoying himself, not because he’s the cause of it. And isn’t Bucky just the luckiest sonofabitch on the planet—to call Steve his? “Tell me what I can do, Buck. Just name it, and it’s yours.”

“This ain’t too bad,” he puffs out, voice just a hair thick and unsteady, “but it’d be better if you joined me.” Pointedly, his fingers dip below the waistband of Steve’s shorts and tease the beginning curve of his ass.

“Yeah, just—let me.” Steve proceeds to fondle him through his underwear, quite thoroughly, like he has every intention of honoring Bucky’s request but just can’t help himself, like he’s hurting for it. Steve maps out the shape and the lay of his hard cock, re-memorizing them, and doesn’t bother being shy about it either, fingers dexterous, _vigorous_ in their exploration. “You feel amazing,” Steve exhales. _“Jesus.”_

“You gotta—” His breath catches when Steve starts working his balls, and his teeth snag and drag against his bottom lip, flesh hand scrabbling at Steve’s shoulder for purchase. “Could you—?”

“ _Any_ thing,” Steve murmurs with unbridled adoration while slowly massaging him, sucking at his collarbone. 

“Take it out.”

Steve knows what he means, pausing, face hidden in his neck, but then nipping deliberately at his chin and pulling away. Without Steve’s warm touch, he squirms and clenches his thighs tighter around Steve’s waist until it elicits a grunt. “Alright, I hear you,” Steve chuckles, not unkindly. “I’m goin’.”

His right hand kneads restlessly at Steve’s nape, forehead pressed to Steve’s temple so that he can look down between them and watch Steve peel himself out of his shorts. 

It’s not something he hasn’t seen a hundred times, but it still thrills him: the anticipation, the exposition. He moans in the back of his throat involuntarily, a little wistfully, as Steve’s clothes puddle on the floor.

“You next? Is that alright?” Steve asks, brushing the hair out of Bucky’s face to find his eyes. After a fervent nod, Steve kisses him hard, once, and breathes out, “Okay.” 

Steve tugs him smoothly to the edge of the island and tucks the loose waistband of his boxers behind his balls. It might not be the most dignified display, but it’ll do in a pinch. The first stroke to his cock sucks all the air from his lungs, makes his eyes prick with tears and his lashes flutter. Steve waits for him to scrape together a bit of composure before licking the pad of one thumb and sliding it along the head of his cock, eyes focused and unwavering when they snap to his. 

What a filthy fucking cheater.

The groan that comes out of him is not pretty; it’s wounded, raw, cathartic. He could just crumble into a thousand pieces and thank Steve for it, too. “Goddamnit, you’d better take the arm off,” he slurs faintly, heart going haywire in his chest.

“Is it hurting?” Only Steve can achieve such sincerity with a hundred-and-eighty-degree hard-on, and God help him, he finds it endearing.

“Nah, it’s good.” The vibranium is lighter, more maneuverable, and overall, better engineered than the HYDRA titanium, putting significantly less strain on his upper body. “But I just finished replacing these countertops, and I’d rather not bust ’em.”

Steve’s chin tilts upwards a fraction, knowingly. “Just the countertops you’re worried about, then?” He gives a particularly dirty twist of his wrist that actually makes Bucky’s toes curl against the cabinets on reflex.

His metal thumb rubs tenderly at the smooth, fragile skin behind Steve’s ear. “I’d rather not break a piece off of you either, now that you mention it.”

“I trust you,” Steve replies with a hushed urgency. 

He drags Steve in for a rough mess of a kiss that conveys his appreciation far better than his words ever could. “I’d feel better without it,” he mutters against Steve’s mouth. “You’re plenty to handle all on your own, Rogers, without advanced machinery thrown into the mix.” 

Steve’s smile is small but genial, curling just the edges of his lips. “Sure, Buck. You know I don’t mind.”

Steve never points out that Bucky can disconnect the arm on his own—that Shuri specifically modified the original design with that purpose in mind. She had inserted biometric scanners just below the artificial deltoid that read certain sets of fingerprints and thereby disengaged the prosthetic. It made maintenance more convenient as well as gave him more autonomy over his body, or at least, its amendments. Aside from himself and Shuri, Steve was the only other person with clearance, so to speak.

It’s a small indulgence, giving Steve that kind of intimate, exclusive access to his body. He doesn’t feel ugly or less than whole when Steve accepts every offered part of him greedily and unflinchingly. Maybe he also likes being doted on every now and then, just like anybody else. 

With a practiced ease, Steve gently grips his vibranium bicep and presses three fingers to the discreetly outlined biometric pads that otherwise blend into the plating pattern. The arm comes off with a few clicks of rearranging internal mechanisms, and the leftover metal stump seals itself off. 

Now, you don’t toss expensive, irreplaceable, custom-made prosthetics into the kitchen sink, even when you’re about to have sex after a seventy-year dry spell, so Steve carefully deposits the arm far down on the opposite counter, out of their apparently generous blast radius.

Very thoughtful, but unfortunately, now his dick is cold and sad, and Steve is very far away. “Get back here. Talk about leaving a guy hangin’, Christ.” He can’t take his eyes off the flex of Steve’s thighs as he returns, so he gropes blindly across the island until he acquires his target, handing over the bottle of olive oil. “Here ya go.”

Steve snorts but takes it, crowding back between his legs until they’re pressed together, moist and warm.

“I was gonna make eggs,” he informs innocently. 

“Until you decided to seduce me,” Steve quips, drizzling oil over his hand without a fuss. The excess drips down Bucky’s stomach and cock, thin and faintly cool and ticklish, and he hisses. 

“I’m not the one who strolled into the kitchen with his tits out.” 

Steve exhales. “Please stop calling them that.”

“I should name ’em. What d’you think of Truth and Justice? The Statue of Liberty’s already taken; that’s what I call your—”

Steve shuts him up good and fast by taking him in his slick grip and giving him a slow, steady pull from root to tip. Checkmate.

_“Oh,”_ he breathes, shuddering, head lolling back on his neck like a string has been cut. A moan bubbles up in his throat, closer to a purr, and it ratchets up an entire octave when Steve’s hot mouth closes over his Adam’s apple and a greasy finger circles his nipple. Every stroke of Steve’s hand sends a long-estranged but familiar throb through him, bittersweet and insistent. “I’m not gonna last at all. Darlin’, get in there.”

Steve manages to just about fit them both in his hand, biting out, _“God,”_ as they slide together, silken and so, so blood-hot.

“I know, I know,” he pants stupidly, leading Steve’s face back up to his, prying those soft, slack lips apart with his thumb so he can lick into Steve, taste him.

It takes no time at all for Steve to unravel him, and then he’s coming over Steve’s fist. “Don’t let me go yet,” he gasps, tense all over as his body peaks and pulses and wrings every bit of pleasure out of him that it can, “not ’til you’re done.” Because it seems vitally important that they see this the whole way through together, that he come down right alongside Steve.

“I won’t,” Steve breathes out, brow scrunching, bottom lip bitten as he works them both over. Bucky’s already straining muscles that he hasn’t felt much less used in decades, and the overstimulation is incredible and terrible by turns. When he has absolutely nothing left to give, twitching and hollowed out, he gnashes his teeth against Steve’s throat with a whine. Trembling, Steve cries out feebly and adds to the mess between them.

He skims his hand up Steve’s nape, against the grain of his hair, and scratches at his scalp. “That’s right, pal. Relax a minute, you earned it. _Fuck.”_

Together, they sort of melt off the island and then ooze onto the cool linoleum, wiping themselves down with any littered clothes they can reach. They’ll probably need spatulas to pry their sweaty skins from the floor later, but right now, the shower might as well be in Bangladesh. 

Steve reappropriates the pajama top for a pillow, wadding it into a ball that he crams behind his neck with a grunt. Meanwhile, Bucky flops around like a landed fish in the narrow aisle between the counters and island that was not designed to accommodate 450 pounds of supersoldier, until eventually, he finds a comfortable position sprawled across Steve with his good shoulder wedged underneath his side.

He could doze off like this, spent and gathered in against Steve, despite being overheated and tacky and sore from where his hipbone is grinding directly into the tile. He utters a noise of appreciation when Steve combs the hair away from his face and lifts it off the back of his neck, the cool air immediately attacking the sweat. 

“I would’ve made it more special,” Steve says casually, which means his brain has been background-fretting during their entire encounter because Steve can’t _do_ casual. 

With his face smushed against Steve’s bountiful pec, he murmurs, “Don’t make me deck you.”

Now Steve’s voice gains an outright plaintive edge. “I would’ve bathed at least.”

Bucky sighs, and with much effort, lifts his head from Steve’s chest to look at him. “Y’know, I doubt even that shield could penetrate your thick skull.”

“You—” Steve’s throat bobs with a hard swallow, his eyes glued to the ceiling. “You should have everything that you want, Buck. I want to give you—” Steve’s face is growing pinker with every stilted word, the veins starting to pop in his forehead like he’s in considerable distress.

Jesus Christ, what a pair of tongue-tied, stunted assholes they make. He decides to spare Steve before he gives himself an aneurysm, craning his neck to lay a kiss on him. Maybe more than one. Only when Steve’s panting and pliant once again does he dare let a rush of words spill out. “I don’t need anything fancy, kid, just you, alright? You’ve been a goddamn saint this last year, _so_ patient with all of my bullshit. Don’t think I don’t know how hard it is on you. I really—” 

Abruptly, Steve smacks him on the ass, a playful tilt to his lips. “You try an’ thank me, Barnes, and I’ll deck _you.”_

He huffs a laugh through his nose. “Fair enough. But you better watch that hand unless you intend on finishing what you start.” It’s currently caressing away the pink mark Steve made, getting less ingenuous by the second.

He could go again, if Steve wanted to, but he’d much rather sink into an afterglow coma in the sweet, dark haven of Steve’s cleavage. Looking up at Steve from this angle is killing his neck, so he does just that—faceplanting into the valley between Steve’s pecs. 

The wiry hair tickles as he drags his nose and lips lightly across it. He has to say, he’s enjoying this ungroomed, mountain-man version of Steve, who’s never been particularly hairy whether it be due to sickliness and Depression-Era malnutrition, army regs, or constantly slipping in and out of the compression gear underneath his uniform. Anytime the sun catches his hair, it shines gold like wheat, from his eyelashes down to the respectable bush around his cock. It’s an awfully good look on him, but Bucky doesn’t want to give him a big head about it, so he keeps such ruminations to himself.

“Hey, Buck?” Steve says, resting a warm palm on the crown of his head, pulling him out of his reverie.

Soon, discomfort will outweigh laziness, and they’ll need to move, but for now, he doesn’t even bother lifting his head out of his newfound happy place. “Mm?”

“While you were renovating the kitchen, did you maybe mount a bunch of knives and your Glock to the underside of our cabinets?”

_“_ Mm _hmm,”_ he replies confidently.

The hand on his head starts carding gently, so nicely, through his hair. “Oh. Okay. Just checking, pal.”


	2. You should know, this isn't recreational.

When Steve stirs at five in the morning (no alarm necessary) and finds the other side of the bed cold, it’s not even that unusual or unpredictable. Yet, every time, always, he’s bombarded by a split-second, gut-wrenching pang of dread at waking up alone—no, not _alone, without Bucky;_ there’s a crucial distinction between those two states of being. He digs the rest of the way out of sleep into consciousness, and then he’s fine, able to reorient himself to where he is, _when_ he is.

It’s not nineteen forty-anything; Bucky isn’t _gone,_ just absent, hunkered down in some other part of the house Steve can reach in less than a minute. Bucky’s corpse isn’t lying abandoned at the bottom of a frozen river like he supposed for all those years, no matter what his own dreams try to convince him of. 

Still, he can count on one hand the number of times Bucky being up this early was a good sign; usually, it means insomnia and nightmares and a day interspersed with silences. 

Instead of changing into his running gear, he starts a room check, one at a time, from the top floor down. Sometimes Bucky wants to be left alone after a bad night, so he’ll extend his run to get out of Bucky’s hair for a few extra hours, let him sort out his head in private. Sometimes Bucky wants him nearby, and they’ll go all out for breakfast, chopping and whisking and frying in companionable silence, hands brushing hips and elbows as they slide past one another. Until he sees Bucky, he won’t know which kind of day it is.

The front porch, Bucky’s favorite haunt after a sleepless night, is unoccupied, so he continues his search. He follows the entryway which abuts the staircase and opens onto the kitchen and living room, knowing he’s on the right track when he hears faint but very specific noises emanating from the latter.

Steve comes to a halt in the doorway of the living room. “Is that porn?” It’s a rhetorical question, of course, because the sounds of slapping flesh and moaning are self-evident. The panoramic view of genitals in full-screen mode also gives the answer away. 

Laptop balanced on his knees, Bucky looks over the back of the couch and taps a key to pause the video on an extremely inopportune frame where the angle and lighting are at their most uncomplimentary. “Mornin’,” he greets. 

“Bad night?” Steve ventures hesitantly. Pornography is an unexpected choice of coping mechanism for Bucky, but it’s a relatively healthy and harmless one, and if it helps, who is he to question it.

“Nah. Couldn’t sleep anymore.” 

Steve hangs around just inside the room. “Should I go?” Just because they had sex in the kitchen—once—doesn’t mean that all of Bucky’s future orgasms must now occur with him present.

“Only if you want to. But you should know, this isn’t recreational; I’m doing research.”

Steve leans on the back of the couch and notices that Bucky does indeed have a notebook page with a substantial amount of scribbling (and crossing out and underlining and circling) on the cushion next to him.

“How do you explain _that_ , then?” he wonders, pointing to the prominent erection in Bucky’s sweatpants.

Bucky blinks up at him innocently. “I’ve been watching naked bodies interlock for the last few hours. I’m only human—well, mostly.”

Steve snorts and then gently knocks their foreheads together with a sigh, keenly grateful that Bucky hadn’t been languishing alone through the night with only the worst moments of his past for company. When Bucky tells him he’s alright, he takes him at his word. They have an unspoken agreement, going both ways: you don’t have to talk about whatever’s bothering you, but you never lie about how you’re doing.

It’s not that they don’t want to—or more importantly, feel like they _can’t_ —share their troubles with each other, that there’s a deficiency of trust. At least for himself, he can admit that it would be grueling work to give voice to the ugliest, most corrosive thoughts in his head; it would be an exorcism requiring a tremendous amount of energy. Especially when any confessions he makes would inevitably lead to Bucky shouldering his pain. Neither one of them is ready to unload their trauma on the other, but in the meantime, touching base every now and then is a start. 

He noses into Bucky’s hair and temple, unwashed and unmasked by soap, and settles inside, contented. It’s true what they say, that out of all the senses, smell is the strongest trigger of memory and emotion. “Mornin’,” he finally returns, laying a string of kisses across Bucky’s tilted-back brow, then his eyelids.

Bucky hums softly, pleased, eyes sliding open the same way he unsheathes one of his knives: dangerous, beautiful. “Could use a study partner,” he says coyly. 

He shouldn’t be so charmed by such a crude come-on, but he is, and Bucky knows it. “Alright. Move over.”

Instead of sliding to the side, Bucky scoots forward, leaving a gap between himself and the couch. Steve’s stomach flutters, and he deftly vaults over the back of the couch to fill the space made for him. It still catches him by surprise at the last moment, how heavy and solid and _big_ Bucky is now, especially reclining against him.

Bucky’s transformation wasn’t as dramatic as his own, but he must’ve gained at least thirty pounds of muscle. It’s impossible not to feel the difference, to compare him pre- and post-HYDRA, but that doesn’t mean Steve has a preference either. It’s all just Bucky, no matter the shape or the number of pieces he comes in. Besides, they’ve already had that insecurity-laden conversation, albeit inversely, when he was the one who sized-up overnight. 

Steve squeezes his thighs a little, where they’re bracketing Bucky’s, and wraps his arms slowly around Bucky’s middle. “Alright?”

“I’d let you know if it wasn’t.” As if in confirmation, Bucky sinks further into the envelopment, letting Steve bear all his weight.

Instead of feeling smothered, he feels anchored, and, God, does he like that. With Bucky’s head tucked under his chin, he clears his throat and asks, “What data are you collecting exactly?” He skims the dozen tabs open in the browser and finds this so-called research to be unexpectedly comprehensive, including not only a variety of porn but also sexual health books, sex therapy sites, and assorted kink forums.

“Just catching up on what I missed.” His voice wobbles as Steve’s hands slip under his clothes, rubbing over smooth, warm skin. “Y’know, all those decades you were asleep, I was on the clock.”

“I don’t think the mechanics have changed all that much since our time,” Steve murmurs, pressing his grin against Bucky’s ear. 

“The terminology is definitely more disgusting.” Bucky closes the laptop and limply tosses it onto the cushion next to them, his notes crinkling under the weight. “Got a few ideas though,” he says, chest heaving and eyes closed, squirming back against him.

“Any you’d care to share?” He doesn’t exactly wait for Bucky to answer, cupping his pec in one hand and his cock in the other. Bucky exhales, back arching and hips rolling in one sinuous writhe, and Steve had meant to lure him to completion nice and lazy, but now he can’t help but start jerking Bucky in earnest, pinching his nipple and groping the firm muscle of his chest. He’s twitching in his briefs, nudging against the small of Bucky’s back.

Bucky’s vibranium fingers slide down his forearm, silky and cool, raising goosebumps all over his skin, and carefully grip his wrist. “Hey, Steve?” he pants, loud against the early-morning stillness, filling up the entire room. “Be a gentleman and take me upstairs, will ya?”

He hears the question inside that question; that’s about as close as Bucky ever gets to asking to be taken care of, so of course, he obliges, tipping Bucky’s face back for a kiss. Bucky gets up first and tugs him out of the dent they made in the couch cushion, and then they just…don’t let go of one another. They amble through the house, fingers intertwined, accompanied by the scuff of bare feet and the occasional creak of a stair. It’s a small thing, silly, but they haven’t held hands like this since they were boys, commanded by their mothers to cross the street together or walk each other to school. That haze of nostalgia settles over him like a warm blanket, and everything seems to slow and sweeten with Bucky’s hand in his. 

As soon as they enter the bedroom, he flattens Bucky against the wall with all of his bulk and kisses him open hard and wet while Bucky’s arms curl behind his neck. Soon, they start tugging at collars and shoving down waistbands, naked before they fall onto the bed. Steve reaches to the back of the bedside drawer for the lube that has been hiding there unassumingly, in case a moment like this came around again.

Bucky uses the distraction to roll over onto his stomach, detaching the arm adeptly and leaning half off the mattress to prop it against the nightstand. 

Steve kneels beside him and says, “Are you sure you don’t want to keep that on? You might need it in a minute.”

Bucky looks back at him with a wry grin. “You cocky sonofabitch, why don’t you just get to work?”

But first, he appreciates the breadth of Bucky’s body spread out before him, the broad shoulders and powerful back sloping down to his waist. He warms the lube up in his hand while he kisses the flesh-and-metal seam at Bucky’s left shoulder and mouths down his spine. With a slick hand, he touches the dimples of Bucky’s lower back and the wedge of his tailbone to warn Bucky where he’s headed.

“Don’t bother with that, okay?” Bucky mumbles, face-down in the bedspread, flesh hand balled up in the blankets.

Steve pets along Bucky’s ribcage with his dry hand but otherwise stops what he’s doing. “It’s been a while for us both, Buck. Are you sure?”

“Positive. Just dump half that bottle over me, and I’ll be good to go.”

“Jesus.” Steve shakes his head, alternately praising and cursing Bucky under his breath, and slicks himself up. He’s excited, as stupid and obvious as that sounds, his hands shaking and stomach full of butterflies; the last time he and Bucky did this, it was in Nazi-occupied territory, and lubricant wasn’t exactly standard issue. A bed is also a nice change of pace for them.

He doesn’t quite use half the bottle, but he does smear a generous amount of lube around for himself and Bucky, who tenses before melting boneless into the mattress.

He stops himself from saying any of the horribly cliché lines no doubt espoused in every video Bucky had watched that morning. But at the moment, they all feel agonizingly true as he pushes inside Bucky with his teeth clenched, overrun by a sublime sort of suffocation, by the pressure and the intensity and the heat.

Bucky groans, breathless, broken, and tears through three layers of comforter and sheets, still canting his hips up for more.

Steve stretches over him, the shift making them both moan, unable to resist kissing all over Bucky’s warm face and tender mouth as he starts thrusting. And the _noises_ —the desperate, overwhelmed, gutted exhalations being wrenched out of Bucky with every impact—Steve feeds on them. Even when they shared an apartment, a semblance of privacy, and some time to themselves, they couldn’t do this: be free and unconstrained.

Steve rises up and takes Bucky with him by the waist, dragging him backwards onto his knees with his shoulders still slumped against the mattress. The angle changes, and Steve can finally bottom out, and he stays there for long, dragging seconds bowed over Bucky, grinding his hips in figure eights to somehow get deeper.

“Goddamnit, Steve,” Bucky growls, any threat undercut by the reediness of his voice, ultimately a plea. 

He caresses Bucky’s haunches and the elegant curve of his back. “Alright, Buck,” he whispers soothingly, “alright.” He takes Bucky by the hips, and in concerted effort, pulls Bucky back as he pushes forward, slamming them together in hard, quick bursts of pleasure.

Bucky seizes up, spreading his knees, and chokes out, “Oh, _God_ ,” wringing the blankets in his fist, and Steve closes his eyes with relish, hips instinctively homing in on that spot. He does it as often as he can, until Bucky’s on the verge of hyperventilating, breathing in fast, wet moans, his face turned out of the bedspread for air, flushed and hair-strewn. A real beauty.

Despite his body screaming at him to do the opposite, he slows down when he feels himself getting close, gasping in restraint.

“You’re killin’ me,” Bucky murmurs, a hint of delirium in his voice, his lips parted and shining. 

Steve’s hips move in deep, languorous rolls, more manageable, so he can reach underneath Bucky and get a hand on him. “Only a little death.” 

Bucky barks out a laugh that dissolves into a low hum when Steve starts stroking him. “Just a little death,” he repeats, sniggering. “ _La petite mort_.”

Steve grins, too, feeling buoyant. He’s convinced there’s no better sight in the universe than Bucky turned-on and wisecracking, moments away from succumbing to pleasure. The only thing he wants more than making it last is watching Bucky tip over the edge, and when he does, he drags Steve down with him.

They pant harshly, grunting together when Steve pulls out. Bucky eases flat onto his stomach, shaking the hair out of his face, and Steve joins him a moment later, collapsing on his back and wiping his hand on the bedspread.

“I missed that.” The understatement of the century—their century. Steve lets out a long exhale, utterly satisfied, pushing his hair back. He’s not ready to stop touching Bucky yet, grazing knuckles down his back and tracing his generous mouth. 

He rests his thumb against Bucky’s lower lip, and Bucky smiles into it so Steve can feel its shape. “You ain’t the only one.” Bucky pecks the pad of his finger and sits up, rooting around in the same bedside drawer, emerging triumphant with the pack of cigarettes that has been stowed there for about a month now, still in the plastic. 

“Been waiting for the right mood,” Bucky explains, divesting the pack of its wrapper one-handed and then tapping it off the nightstand to knock a stick loose. “Not Luckies, but they’ll do.”

Except during the war—when most anybody overseas took up chain smoking to stave off the cold or hunger or terror—Bucky’s always been an occasional smoker. He’d indulge himself at a bar or a dance hall, at the end of a long day’s work, and most consistently, after getting well and truly laid.

He has a hoard of memories of Bucky lighting up on their fire escape in nothing but his pants and suspenders, the evidence of their exertions, still fresh and damp on his skin, hidden underneath. A silhouette in moonlight and cigarette smoke, dark straps against his pale back as he leaned on the railing.

“That actually do anything for you?” he asks.

Bucky tucks the cigarette in the corner of his mouth and breaks a match out of its book. “Mm, not really. Metabolize the nicotine too fast to get any kind of buzz.” He shrugs, one-shouldered. “But I like the ritual of it, the familiarity.”

Seeing as they’ve got their own land now, and their “lifestyle” is no longer illegal, Bucky doesn’t bother getting dressed. He crosses the room naked, opens the window, and strikes the match off the sill.

He watches Bucky stick nearly his entire head out the window before exhaling. Entirely bemused, he asks, “Wha’cha doin’?”

“It’s already pollen season, Steve. I don’t want to kill you.” Bucky seems to realize what he’s said the second after he’s said it, turning around with a bewildered smile. “Huh,” he states, punctuated and curious. 

“My lungs are pretty strong these days, Buck.”

“Shit.” Bucky laughs at himself. “Force of habit, I guess.” 

“Well, I don’t have allergies or asthma anymore, so why don’t you come back over here?” He scoots up against the headboard and pats the space between his legs, smiling warmly. 

“I don’t want the house to smell like smoke.” Bucky hasn’t taken a second drag yet, his cigarette burning idly, pinched between his thumb and fingers. 

“Just this once,” Steve coaxes. 

“Yeah, okay.” Bucky climbs back onto the bed and settles against him, head on Steve’s breastbone, tendrils of smoke curling and dancing out from between his parted lips.

“You always did look too good doing that,” he mentions quietly, transfixed by the soft purse of Bucky’s pink mouth around the cigarette, the gentle flare of his nostrils when he exhales.

Bucky chuckles darkly. “I think that’s because your mind is going someplace else.” 

A frisson of lust shoots through his belly like a spasm or an electric shock. His hands convulse, splayed low over Bucky’s stomach and one thigh.

“Yeah, now that I think of it,” he can see the smirk on Bucky’s lips, “cigarettes aren’t the only thing I haven’t sucked since the war. I should probably remedy that.” Bucky speaks with all the passionate urgency of someone announcing the need to clean out the gutters, puffing away like some smug choo-choo train.

“That’s alright, Buck,” he coos benevolently, smacking a kiss onto his temple, “you enjoy your smoke. I’ll find some way to occupy myself.” His hands inch downwards, past a navel and into the inner crease of a thigh, circling Bucky’s cock and easing his leg up and out of the way.

Bucky arches his neck, Adam’s apple in sharp relief and cigarette pointing straight at the ceiling, bitten between his teeth. “Bastard,” he mutters, reaching back to twist his fingers in the hair at Steve’s nape.

“Mmhmm,” Steve concedes, resting his cheek atop Bucky’s head, hand sliding over his cock, two fingers slipping back inside him. They didn’t clean off after the first round—which from the outside might seem gross but in the thick of it only feels more delicious. 

Smoke shudders out of Bucky’s mouth, and maybe he’s worried he’ll set the already-ruined bed on fire because he tosses his cigarette into the glass of water on the nightstand, where it extinguishes with a hiss. His face contorts into that in-between expression of pleasure and pain, cock filling in Steve’s hand, and a ragged noise escapes him.

Reading his mind, Bucky swallows, cracks a grin up at him, and assures, “It’s good. Jus’ go easy. Only my arm’s made of vibranium.” 

Steve flushes all over, zero to sixty in just six words, heat sloshing around under his skin. “Damn you,” he breathes.

Bucky’s eyelids flutter shut, and his hand kneads Steve’s hip. “Don’ worry. I like bein’ able to feel you a while afterwards. ’s nice. It’s like you’re still with me.” Steve doesn’t know how else to handle _any_ of those comments besides redoubling his efforts to render Bucky speechless, most immediately by sealing their lips in a kiss. 

Their mouths slot together upside down, sloppy and uncoordinated and fantastic. Before anything else, he knows Bucky is coming by the sharp bite to his upper lip and the way Bucky traps it between his teeth afterwards with a groan. Lax and draped across him, Bucky eventually says, “There’s no way I’m blowing you until we get in the shower.”

Steve regards the unseemly state of their bedding, with the rips exposing the mattress, the unmentionable smears, and the oozing puddle of lube where one of them had crushed the bottle at some point; then he assesses the even-worse state of _themselves._ “That’s fair.”

* * *


End file.
